Medgyessy was cool under spotlight
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BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary's socialist prime minister has rejected opposition accusations he worked for the Soviet KGB.

Peter Medgyessy has been under pressure to resign after a newspaper published confidential documents showing he had worked for the secret service while an official at the finance ministry in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

"I did not write reports about people, that was not my job. I did nothing that I am ashamed of," he told an all-party parliamentary committee set up to probe his record as a counter-intelligence officer.

Appearing calm and assured during three hours of questioning by a dozen MPs and under the constant glare of television cameras, Medgyessy denied having collaborated with the KGB during his time as a secret service officer at Hungary's Finance Ministry between 1978-82.

He also insisted he had never served as an informer for Hungary's widely loathed secret police.

Medgyessy, who heads a coalition of ex-communist Socialists and liberal Free Democrats which won April elections, told the committee he had been in charge of the ministry's international finance department, Reuters news agency reported.

He said he assessed Hungary's economy and foreign currency situation at a critical time during the oil crises of the 1970s.

His job, he told the panel, had been to edge Hungary towards joining the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1982, without letting Moscow know, so Hungary could have access to international loans in the wake of the global energy crises.
Election fight fuelled spy claims

His critics, in attacks carried over from a bruising election campaign, have insisted he informed on his colleagues to his bosses when working for the secret service.

"I did not maintain any network… and I had no relationship whatsoever with the KGB," he stressed.

Medgyessy quit as an active secret service officer in late 1982 after being named as deputy prime minister.

Talk of Medgyessy's covert past was widespread during the elections, prompting the previous conservative government to warn voters of the risks of a return to the discredited days of communism.

In June, a hostile right-wing press produced documents claiming Medgyessy had served as secret service officer D-209. Those revelations forced the political elite to begin screening some 200 politicians who held office since communism collapsed bloodlessly in 1989, Reuters added.

Instead of blasting a hole in the fragile centre-left coalition — at a time when Hungary enters tough, final European Union entry negotiations — the defeated conservatives have found that several of their members may have had links to the secret services.

Discussion/Fórum